sculptors and architects of remembrance· introduction
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This book is the fourth by the author on the subject of remembrance and is a companion to the books Remembrance and British War Memorials. Remembrance has a number of components and these consist primarily, but not exclusively, of the modes of remembrance, memorialisation and commemoration.
| “ John Mills scuplted the Women of the Second World War which was originally intended to occupy the site of McMillan's diminutive staue of Sir Walter Raleigh” |
The roots of organised British memorialisation lie firmly in the 18th century, with Parliament repeatedly voting funds to commission posthumous statuary of great sailors and soldiers to be placed in both St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.
In the long French Revolutionary Wars, Parliament voted the astonishing sum of £110,575 specifically for that purpose. The memorialisation process continues to the present and some of the sculptors in this book are still with us, with those such as John W Mills, Philip Jackson and Faith Winter continuing to be commissioned to sculpt memorials in our own age.
This book lays no claim to be an exhaustive record of all the artists involved in the process. The vast majority of Britain’s war memorials were erected in the period between the end of the Great War in 1918 and the General Strike of 1926. The thumbnail sketches in this book of the 124 key figures in the war memorial story are not exclusively Englishmen.
Given Britain’s Imperial history over the last two centuries, nationality counts for little in such a text and some of the individuals here have multiple national identities. The story incorporates Scots, Welshmen, Irishmen, Australians, Americans, Canadians, a New Zealander, Frenchmen, Italians, a Swiss, a Czechoslovakian, an Austro-Hungarian and a member of a German Royal House.
In these pages may be found carping by art critics, uproar in the affairs of the Royal Academy, ecclesiastical umbrage, rivalry for royal favour and tales of incredible generosity. Unsurprisingly, many of the characters have ‘walk-on parts’ in each other’s stories. Of those in this volume, a few remain household names, while the majority have been quite forgotten. All at some point played a role in the memorialisation story and they appear in this study in chronological order.
The architects in the study spent many years in the service of the Imperial War Graves Commission and after both World Wars designing and constructing the ‘silent cities’ worldwide to honour and care for the resting places of the fallen.
The sculptors deployed their skills at home and abroad in the service of remembering the British Empire’s war dead and commemorated great men in stone and bronze.